SCENE 2
Enter Geske.
GESKE. Is this where you are, you dawdler? It would be better if you were at work on something, or at least superintending your workmen; for we lose one job after another from your neglect.
HERMAN. Quiet, wife! You will be Madam Burgomaster before you know it. Do you think that I go out just to pass the time? Ay, I do ten times as much work as all of you in the house: the rest of you work with your hands only; I work with my brain.
GESKE. All crazy people work that way, building castles in the air just as you do, cudgelling their brains with bosh and nonsense, imagining that they are doing something of importance when it is really nothing at all.
GERT. If she were my wife, she would not talk that way more than once.
HERMAN. Ah, Gert, a statesman must pay no attention to that sort of thing. Two or three years ago I should have made my wife's back smart for such words, but since I have begun to look into works on politics, I have learned to despise such trifles. Qui nesclt simulare, nescit regnare, says an ancient statesman, who was no fool. I think his name was Agrippa, or Albertus Magnus. It is a fundamental principle of all the politics in the world; for he who cannot endure an evil speech from an angry and unreasonable woman is not fit to hold any high office. Self-control is the highest virtue and the jewel which most adorns rulers and magistrates. Therefore I maintain that no one should sit in our council here in the city until he has given proof of his self-control, and made it clear that he can take words of abuse, blows, and boxes on the ear. I am by nature quick-tempered, but I try to overcome it by study. I once read in the preface of a book called The Political Stockfish that when one is overwhelmed with anger he must count twenty, and his anger will pass.
GERT. It would do me no good to count up to a hundred.
HERMAN. Then you are good for nothing but a subordinate. Henrich, give my wife a mug of ale at the side table.
GESKE. Oh, you beast! Do you think I have come here to drink?
HERMAN. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—Now, it is all over. Listen, mother, you must not speak so harshly to your husband—it sounds utterly vulgar.
GESKE. Is it aristocratic to beg? Hasn't any woman reason enough to scold when she has such a good-for-nothing for a husband—a man who neglects his house like this, and leaves his wife and children in want?
HERMAN. Henrich, give her a glass of brandy, for she has worked herself into a passion.
GESKE. Henrich, give my husband a couple of boxes on the ear, the scoundrel!
HENRICH. You must do that yourself. I decline such a commission.
GESKE. Then I take it on myself. (Boxes both his ears.)
HERMAN. One, two, three-(counts to twenty, starts to strike her, but begins counting again). Eighteen, nineteen, twenty—If I hadn't been a statesman, you would have caught it that time!
GERT. If you don't keep your wife in check, I will. Get out of here.
Go! Out with you!
[Exit Geske, still scolding.